Alien Autopsy
Alien Autopsy
On August 28, 1995, Fox Television released a documentary titled Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction. It was aired twice to increased ratings, with the November showing garnering 11.7 Million viewers and a 14% market share, subsequently becoming a major sensation and a subject of intense debate.
Possibly a major factor of the documentary’s appeal was its apparent objectivity, having Jonathan Frakes of Star Trek fame intoning “We remain skeptical”. Behind the scenes, however, film producer John Jopson had alerted Fox executives of his strong belief that the footage was actually a hoax but was overruled as ratings most likely would have suffered if his views were made public before the show’s airing.
Throughout the years, numerous pictures and footages of alien autopsy have been offered to the public, all of which were declared to be elaborate and sometimes not so elaborate hoaxes, but nothing compares to the sophistication and exacting preparation performed under the direction of Fox Television. Ray Santilli was the London businessman who brought the footage to Fox Television as “the real deal” and reportedly paid $100,000 for the “authentic” 1947 Roswell footage. Santilli had claimed that he met an elderly man in Cleveland, Ohio in 1992 who identified himself as a former Army photographer who was present at the alien autopsy that was performed at Fort Worth Army Air Field. He was later revealed as Jack Barnett by Santilli.
In 2006, Santilli admitted that the footage shown on the Fox documentary was not the actual film that Santilli had seen in 1992 but just a “reconstruction” containing some frames from the original film, which had degraded and was not wholly usable by the time he had raised enough money to complete the purchase with the help of his German business associate, Volker Spielberg. Prior to 2006, Santilli had always maintained that the footage had been reviewed by various experts in different fields, such as forensic pathologists, surgeons or special effects creators and declared to be authentic.
However, even as early as 1995, the Fox documentary of the alien autopsy had come under extensive criticism and skepticism. Of particular significance was the fact that not only was the entire footage blurry and fuzzy, the close up and critical shots tended to conveniently become out of focus and observers had also wondered why the camera did not focus on extracted organs. Any forensic pathologist performing such a procedure would have been obsessed with documenting the findings. It should also be noted that World War II combat cameramen were trained to aim for smoothness, whereas the camera work in the footage was jumpy.
It was further pointed out that the person rendering the alien autopsy did not use the scissors the way that surgeons or pathologists were trained, holding the scissors with thumb and forefinger, whereas surgeons would have used thumb and middle or ring finger, leaving the forefinger to steady the scissors further up toward the blades. Autopsy cuts also tend to be deeper and quicker, using long strokes, as compared to the short and almost gingerly made initial cuts shown in the footage. Proper procedures also require moving the body, not witnessed in the footage.
- On a final note, in 2006, a Manchester sculptor and special effects creator by the name of John Humphreys had claimed that he was the alien autopsy creator, with himself acting as the pathologist shown in the footage. He stated that he used the exact same process to recreate the original creature for the newer 2006 film Alien Autopsy. So are aliens real?
